Wednesday, July 29, 2015

The Air Up Here

"What's the view from thirty thousand feet?"

This one must really want to be the new deanlet. What else could account for this recent addition of business-speak to his lexicon? Maybe he's read a book called "Speak Like the Boss You Want To Be" or somesuch. I make a mental note to wish death upon the author, then ponder my own predilections, one of which is occasionally to quote a line from a movie. Right now, I'm thinking What we've got here is, failure to communicate.

"Are you asking how it's going?" I demur, trying not to reward his annoying new habit.

"Yeah."

"In that case, it's going O.K. at the moment. A couple of hiccoughs, but we fixed them."

"Well, then. My work here is done."

"Oh?" I widen my eyes, flash a sincere yet slightly sinister smile, and alter my voice to match. "Your work is just beginning. You have to carry the ball now." I make a sweeping motion with my hand. "All this we have here now, which is the way you wanted it, well, you get it."

I turn on my heel and beat an unhurried retreat to my office. It being
too early for me to go home to drink, my unmedicated brain cannot avoid
rehashing the events that got us here.
The Really Big Project was
going to revolutionize pedagogy in our program. It would be a masterful
combination of large group instruction (i.e., lecture), small group
sessions, assessments, wikis, discussion boards, etc. -- all the latest
shiny things. Emails went out addressed not only to faculty who were
already involved, but also to those who might do similar things in the
future, heralding a first meeting to explain The Project and to map out
all the moving parts. It had nothing to do with me, so I skipped that
meeting.

The next wave of emails contained links to YooToob
videos that explained the technologies. I thought, what the hell? and
gave in to it for a few minutes while I huffed down a sandwich at my desk. So when
it was announced in the third wave of emails that a company
representative would be on campus to give a live demonstration of one of
the technologies, I attended.

The day after that, Panquehue came
into my office and sat in the chair normally occupied by wide-eyed
students during my Come to Jesus conversations.

"Well,
I've only been to just the one demo, which you were at, too. But part
of it? I don't think so. It's neat stuff, but I'm not thinking of using
any of it till next semester at the earliest."

"Here's the thing. They're using it in the other section of my course."

"Wait, what? You're not?"

"It
looks like I have to. They're running with this thing. It has been
written from on high, announced, publicized -- I can't walk away from
it! I'd look like an idiot!"

"You said they're running with it. But you were part of the mapping from the start, right?"

"No! They kept postponing the meeting till I was finally away on vacation!"

"You're shitting me!"

"I shit you not. Could you please come to the next meeting? I'm not sure anybody else really knows what's going on."

"Like I do? Sure, I'll come. I've got to see this."

And
so I did. Limburger was in his finest form, hailing his having planned
out the whole thing, with only the briefest recognition given the other
members of his inner circle. Then came time to explain the plan.

"Panquehue will be Ogre's second in the event that Ogre is unable to fulfil his duties," he declared.

"Panquehue?" I quavered, afraid of the answer to my next question. "Were you aware of this?"

"No, I was not," deadpanned Panquehue.

"Nor
was I. So, then, I take it that it might not be too much of a stretch
for me to infer that you are also unaware as to any specifics of the
duties that I might be unable to fulfil?"

"Not a stretch at all."

"In which case I feel kind of in the dark here. Limburger, may I please see that list of duties you're holding?"

"Ah, uh," Limburger stammered, "it's not quite final yet."

"Humor
me." I gently snatched the paper from his insufficient
grasp, scanned it once quickly, then flipped it over several times, to
be sure my eyes were not deceiving me. "This is just a list of names.
There's more, right?"

"Uh, ahh, I was hoping, uh, you see, today . . ."

But so deep was my cringe that I didn't hear the rest.
I recall resting my forehead against the whiteboard while looking down,
spying a marker in the tray, picking it up, and uncapping it.

"O.K."
I said to the gathering. "Let's figure this out." And so we did. My
colleagues rose to the occasion brilliantly; I could hardly move my hand
quickly enough to record all their ideas. After the meeting adjourned,
Panquhue stayed behind to help me transcribe the scheme, which we then
distributed to our colleagues.

Then came The Big Day. Everyone
was in their assigned place. Everything went off with only the most
minor of glitches. Though my role in the event itself was minor, as I
sipped my evening single-malt I allowed myself to feel some satisfaction
alongside my relief, which too soon became exhaustion.

Limburger
magnanimously accepted the Dean's praise for the entire thing, but that
didn't bother me in the slightest. How could it, since I'd already
handed the whole thing back to him?

A few months later, the
emails showed up in my inbox again. "Building on the success of the
Really Big Project," they began. I deleted them, mostly unread.

A
few colleagues inquired if I would be helping to stage The Really Big
Project Two Point Zero. "Well, I usually have a society meeting around that
time of year," I equivocated.

Through the window of a passenger
jet cruising in excess of thirty thousand feet somewhere above the
parched Midwest U.S., I see ominous billows below. The smoke dissipates
before it can commingle with the cabin air, and I am denied sense beyond
my sight. Are these puffs just the normal manifestation of industry?
Brushfires? Houses burning to their foundations? My interest cannot
transcend the academic, and I am surprised by the detachment I feel from
these events that are very real to the real people below.

Back
home, fires of another kind may be burning; I am quite detached from
them, too. I wonder if my need to distance myself from those fires has
spilled into other areas of my psyche. What have I become? Am I so above
it all? So unfeeling, so uncaring? Have I given my last fuck? Will I
give a fuck ever again?

Cloud cover blocks my view of the terrain. The greyness of the vista becomes uninteresting, and I return to my book.

Anytime a deanlet or even worse, a deanlet wannabe, tries a new empty-headed lexicon on me, my twitching hand flails about for my staple gun. I will then ask them what they mean, and if they persist in babbling, I'll flat-out ask them please, talk like a normal person.

"I know what you're thinking. 'Did he fire 100 staples or only 99?' Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a Black & Decker, the most powerful staple gun in the world and would staple your tongue clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, deanlet?

Brilliant! (both the strategy -- intended or accidental -- and the telling).

Apparently our bookstore just got a new ordering system. The email about it I received sounded so much like the spam I get from various academic publishers at this time of year ("welcome to edu--blah-blah-blah-techy word -blah") that I deleted it. I only realized that it's an actual thing that somebody thinks we're going to use when our extremely capable department administrator, who heretofore has handled the textbook orders, emailed us all to say that the new system is not working very well, and she's able and willing to continue handling things as she always has.

What Was This?

College Misery was a dysfunctional group blog where professors got the chance to release some of the frustration that built up while tending to student snowflakes, helicopter parents, money mad Deans, envious colleagues, and churlish chairpeople.

Our parent site, Rate Your Students, started in 2005, and we continued that mission beginning in 2010. Ben at Academic Water Torture and Kimmie at The Apoplectic Mizery Maker both ran support blogs during periods when this blog had died.